Learning Tool or Spyware? “Impero” Found On School-Provided Laptops

This is the first year that the Sophomores and Freshmen got their own, personal, school-provided “One to One” laptops. While these laptops are very convenient and useful, they can also be potentially a way for the school to monitor you via an installed piece of software called Impero.

And in case you wanted to remove or disable Impero, you can’t. In fact, you can do very little with “your” computer because you don’t control it. Your account isn’t an admin account, so you can’t add or remove programs, or even the desktop shortcuts that you don’t use.

So far, fairly few students and even teachers know what Impero is and what it does. When asked about it, John Ranta, computer teacher said:

“…I don’t know much … about it. I first noticed it when I was logging in to a computer in Lab 241, so it is running in the computer labs. A little window popped up, telling me that an app was launched, called Impero. As far as I know, no one has announced it, so I don’t know who authorized it. And I don’t know if it’s been put to use.”

When I asked members of the Community Council this year and last, none of them recall voting or even discussing this. Clearly, this was not authorized by students, and not well communicated (if at all) to teachers.

“Impero is a teaching management software that will be very useful in classrooms … It allows the teacher to have some control over the students’ laptops during class, for example, they could push out a link to everyone’s laptop and have each student click on the link rather than having to type it in.”

She also says that it is not active and does not work at home:

“Impero does have some monitoring capabilities, however, we will not be using those here. Impero only works at school, not at home. At this time, Impero is not active. We installed it on the 1:1 laptops just to make it easier for us when we do activate the product.”

HOW TO CHECK OUT IMPERO FOR YOURSELF

If you would like to see where Impero is on your computer, click on the up arrow in the tray (bottom-right of the screen):

Click on the orange and blue ring icon to reveal a menu:

Clicking on the “Open Impero Console” icon just results in the error “You are not permitted to run Impero Console”. Clicking on “Properties” reveals information about your computer. Clicking on “Personal Groups” reveals a sub-menu where you can add yourself to a group or remove yourself from one, but none are available. The most interesting one is “Disable Impero”, which asks you for a password. Entering something in and pressing “OK” simply closes the dialog and nothing else happens.

If your talking internet wise, some freedoms are restricted. However not all freedom is restricted.

miles grisham on
January 29th, 2019 2:13 pm

so I’m on a team that helps with student Chromebook and technology for teachers etc. but Impero can also access your Chromebook at home using the permissions granted to it by the administrators. but this means that if connected at home to your internet the device can access all unprotected devices on the network so if you get a virus that targets Impero not only is the entire schools’ computers at risk so are all of your home devices connected to the internet.

TF5333 on
February 12th, 2019 7:52 am

Cameron Lawson its called an ‘insecure CAT5 ports and an admin login’

Benjamin C on
November 18th, 2019 3:38 pm

I don’t necessarily disapprove of this client but what worries me is the ability of the software to enable the camera software on my chromebook and view that screen. The administrator is able to open up websites and other programs so why wouldn’t they be able to access my camera and open it in the background. Just worries me that there isn’t any regulation for the administrators themselves.

Ulu on
December 2nd, 2019 7:31 am

It’s very dumb, like it’s no safe and google translate is banned for no reason. It is scary how any one who is an administrator can see everything you do. Im writing this in a class, and teachers can see what i write and it is scary. My Pc just got locked for writing this. This is bad.

A student on
December 20th, 2019 5:56 am

My friend’s fave website (a yu-gi-oh one) is blocked. My fave website is amazon since I like to look at pc components like a gtx 1070 and I am worried if it gets banned… Also the antivirus shows impero is MALWARE!

bruh on
February 20th, 2020 9:03 pm

They once used impero to ban me from tcad and it said it was banned because it contianed dashboard tinkercad so i just went to my profile on tcad,not the dashboard and it worked.they keep warning me they are gonna ban me from tcad again,HA,i’d like to see them try!